Not everyone that works on Victoria Island in Lagos could afford to stay on the island, many of the workers of the companies that occupy Banana Island, Victoria Island and other posh areas in Lagos don’t leave anywhere near there places of work due to the astronomically high cost of real estate in these areas.
For such workers, they have to endure long hours on the Third Mainland Bridge and other locations. It is expected that if you plan to resume work at 8am and you don’t stay on the Island, you may have to be on the road from 5am. This is a major issue of concern considering the fact that this is not so in neighboring cities such as Abeokuta in Ogun state, and Ibadan the capital city of Oyo state.
Many options have been – and are being deployed with little or no significant impact on the traffic situation in Lagos.
“When the traffic was just beginning to be a subject of concern,the government introduce a system where only cars with even-number plate numbers would ply the road on a particular while those with odd number who ply the road the next day,” Funmi Ayinde a former Lagos resident who decided to move to Ibadan, told Innovation Village.
She said the major causes of traffic back then could be linked to specific markets days.
“When there was traffic back then, people would think it was Answani Market Day because people come from far and near to buy stuff in the market. But this is not the case anymore, as the traffic had worsen over the years and had become a daily phenomenon,” she added.
As one of the rapidly developing cities in Africa, the traffic situations are not expected to get better anytime soon – it is actually predicted to worsen since more people are moving to the city and more cars are added to the road daily.
The Lagos state government attempted to ameliorate the traffic crisis in the state with the deployment of traffic lights, wardens and other categories of personnel – yet commuters still spend long hours on the road even though no one is breaking traffic rules. This is why the state government decided to look LASTMA, KAI and police officers, choosing to explore something that is regarded as the answer to all problems – technology, specifically mobile apps.
Revealing the state government’s mobile-app-for-traffic-jams intention, Adulahmed Mustapha, director general, Lagos State Financial Systems Management Bureau, said the government is exploring technology to tackle a number of socio-economic challenges such as in transport, education, healthcare, among others.
“We are not leaving any stone unturned in our quest to use ICT in service delivery. With particular reference to traffic management, we have invited IBM to come for a proof of concept; now we are moving to a trial module. In other words, we are at different levels of our traffic management models,” he said.
He revealed that security cameras in city of Lagos will not just focus on crime; instead, their scope will be expanded to monitoring traffic.
“The cameras will be integrated to the Traffic Radio too. So, the LTV will have segments (morning and evening) dedicated to traffic monitoring,” he said.
But monitoring isn’t just enough because knowing that there is heavy traffic does not mean that the information would make the traffic jams to disappear – nor discourage people from plying the route especially when there are no easier and quicker alternative routes. This is why a model that is more ‘interventional’ would be more appropriate – something that opens up more routes or takes as many cars as possible off Lagos roads. There is just one thing that comes to mind – carpooling service.
When stuck on the Third Mainland Bridge, look around and you would see that there are more private-owned cars on the bridge than public transport cars. Look closely enough and you would see that most of these cars have one or two persons in them. Now imagine if they can leave their cars at home and join a reliable carpooling service that can take them home safely. This is one solution that can go a very long way in improving the traffic situation in the city of Lagos.
Interestingly, there are many of such services already launched or in the pipeline. Uber too has a ride sharing feature and the company may be testing its carpooling feature already. There are several other locally developed carpooling services aiming to capture the Lagos market but they have security concerns in order to gain public attention.Even when they have everything figured out, getting enough people that would make significant difference in Lagos traffic woes would be difficult if there is enforceable government intervention – just like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) compelled bank customers to learn to use ATMs.
This is why, I believe, it will take more than technology to put the traffic crisis in Lagos under control – a radical action that would compel the citizens to take safe, reliable and affordable environment-friendly options would go a long way. But the question would then be – will the service providers have sufficient capacity to satisfactorily meet the carpooling demands of Lagos?